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News On Laptops For Education
AdamWill notes a Mandriva press release with the news that the government of Nigeria has selected Intel-powered classmate PCs running Mandriva Linux for educational use in a nationwide pilot. About 17,000 machines will be involved at first. We can only wonder at the maneuvering and negotiations that went on with the OLPC project. The latter had its first announced order for 100,000 XO machines, from Uruguay, with a potential for 400,000 over time. The bigger news out of OLPC is that Microsoft is porting XP to the platform, and chairman Nicholas Negroponte says that's fine with him: "It would be hard for OLPC to say it was 'open' and then be closed to Microsoft. Open means open."
Add to this the problem that XP on a low cost laptop becomes the initial hardware price, plus $X for the OS, plus $Y for useful productivity software (assuming MS pushes that too), plus $Z for who knows what else. I know there's no reason anyone would be forced to buy extra software just because their machine runs Windows, but you have to admit that it helps reinforce the mindset that software should be purchased from a company like MS. Try to imagine that mindset combined with the perspective of new users in developing regions where computing is still not so ubiquitous as it is in more developed places. OTOH, Linux (BSD or whatever) on a low cost laptop is the initial hardware price, plus $0 for the OS, $0 for useful productivity software that is often pre-installed, plus $0 for whatever else...and of course, it opens up greater possibilities for for those that move past the point-and-click stage of the computing learning curve.
It didn't double the specs or the cost to do that. The cost is still less than double the $100 target, and it was projected to be over that target in the early production runs even before they increased the specs to meet the needs that the countries looking into buying it had communicated. Yes, some of that was probably related to ability to run Windows, but so what? The OLPC project isn't working to advance the interests of developed-world Linux fans, its making a machine to meet the needs of real people in the real world. And if the countries aren't going to buy it if it isn't capable of being repurposed to run Windows (which, if nothing else, gives the countries more options if they buy the machine and later change their mind about the software/content provided by OLPC and its partners), then OLPC needs to make a machine that addresses that concern.
XO is an innovation in software as well as hardware. What I would like to see is the laptop in the hands of "rich" nation's school children. Yes, we can afford normal computers, and some school districts have deployed them, but not in an innovative way like the XO project proposition. With a truely open distribution model and relatively rich customers we might find the economies of scale that allow the laptop to cost $100.